Sunday, August 30, 2009

Impulse CoDeveloper

Impulse CoDeveloper™ includes the Impulse C™ software-to-hardware compiler, interactive parallel optimizer, and Platform Support Packages supporting a wide range of FPGA-based systems. Impulse tools are compatible with all popular FPGA platforms.

Impulse CoDeveloper™ is a hardware/software design tool that allows the C language to be used to develop applications for mixed hardware/software platforms including Xilinx MicroBlaze-based Virtex-II or Spartan FPGAs. The Impulse C libraries and compiler tools support multiple programming models, including streams-based programming, allowing a software programmer to make use of available FPGA resources for hardware coprocessing without the need to write low-level hardware descriptions. The compiler tools included with CoDeveloper provide the necessary C to RTL compilation path, as well as providing automated generation of software/hardware interfaces that are specifically optimized for the MicroBlaze processor platforms. This capability makes it possible for an application developer to create a complete hardware/software application with no need to write VHDL or Verilog code. Instead, the CoDeveloper tools create the necessary low-level hardware and software descriptions (in the form of HDL outputs and automatically-generated software libraries) which can then be imported directly into the Xilinx tools for hardware synthesis and implementation. CoDeveloper HDL outputs are also fully compatible with third-party synthesis tools including those available from Xilinx, Synplicity and Mentor.

Impulse C to RTL Flow

Write or import ANSI C designs using Impulse MicroBlaze libraries.

Compile and debug within CodeWarrior™, GCC™, Visual Studio™, or other.

Use CoDeveloper and Impulse C to improve parallelism and identify performance bottlenecks.